“You hacked my e-mail?”
Nancy shrugged. “I didn’t need to. I saw you type in your password once. Your name with one-two-three after it isn’t very original.”
“Nancy, that is out of line—way out of line,” Jameson said. “We will discuss what happens to you later.” He turned to Brittany. “Is she right? Did you write an article about survivors?”
“It was a draft article,” Brittany said. “It wasn’t meant for publication.”
“Not until you can make up some sources?” Paulie said snidely. “Or do you have more ‘proof’ that we don’t know about?”
“My PI said you were with a man. Was he one of them?” Nancy asked.
Brittany didn’t know whether Nancy’s comment was a shot in the dark or just an effort to make Brittany look silly, but it didn’t matter. The thought of John being unmasked or someone learning that he was alive made her blood run cold. If he was hurt or killed because of her... because of something she did...
She couldn’t even think about it.
Which made what would seem like a horrible choice of defending her work and breaking her promise to John or letting her boss believe what her coworkers were accusing her of easy.
There wasn’t a choice at all. John was right. In her quest for the truth, she sometimes lost sight of the human costs. The truth did have limits, and she’d just come up against hers. She wouldn’t do anything that would put him in more danger. Even if it meant lying. Even if it meant covering up a story. Even if it meant the job she loved.
He’d asked her to give him the trust she hadn’t given her brother.“You should have trusted him.”John was right. She should have. It was too late for Brandon—and she would regret that every day of her life—but it wasn’t too late for John.
She responded to Nancy first. “He wasn’t one of them because there were no survivors. He was that hockey player I told you I was dating who came to help me out.”Thank you, Mick.She took a deep breath and turned to Jameson. “There isn’t any proof.”
Brittany thought that would be it. But apparentlyJameson had more faith in her than she realized. He seemed to suspect she was hiding something. “Let me read it. Maybe there is something we can use.”
Brittany shook her head numbly. She knew what she had to do. But it wasn’t easy to get the words out, knowing what they would cost her. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“Why?” he asked.
She wanted to cry. Her last chance to restore her reputation and have the career she loved was about to go up in smoke. “Paulie and Nancy were right. I made it up. I made it all up.”
The silence in the room was deafening. She’d surprised even Nancy.
Of course Jameson fired her. She’d left him with no other choice. Brittany was so ashamed, she couldn’t even look at him.
She returned to her cubicle—escorted—to pack up her things, realizing that no one would ever take a chance on her again.
She’d hit rock bottom enough times in the past to know what it felt like. But then she’d had her brother—and John. Her three feet of water.
Now she was touching rock and had no one to blame but herself.
Twenty-six
John woke feeling even shittier than he had the night before. And for once it wasn’t from drinking himself into oblivion. It was fromnotdrinking himself into oblivion and having some of the worst dreams he’d had since fleeing Russia. Instead of seeing his SEAL brothers’ faces in his nightmares, he’d seen Brittany’s.
She was running in the darkness and smoke was everywhere. She was yelling for him to help her, and he couldn’t find her. Every time he closed his eyes he’d see her crying, telling him she loved him, and himself standing there paralyzed with fear. Wanting to do something but too damned scared to move. He’d been scared in his life before, but he’d never been a coward.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Dynomite? Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”
The LC’s voice penetrated the haze of his sleep-deprived brain. John hadn’t been listening. He needed to snap out of it.
When Scott Taylor had shown up at his hotel room this morning, John had been stunned. And so damned happy to see him, he could have cried.
For more than two months he’d been telling himself it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he’d lost his best friend and half the family he had left. It didn’t matter that the survivors had been forced to scatter to different corners of the globe. It didn’t matter that he was sitting on his ass alone—in fucking Finland—doing none of the things he’d been trained to do.
It didn’t matter that he was alive when his best friend wasn’t.
But that was bullshit. Brittany had known that and had called him on it, but it wasn’t until he’d seen his commanding officer standing in front of him that he knew how much he’d been fooling himself.
